The Story Behind "The Firecracker Explodes"

In this and the forthcoming blog posts, I am going to provide some information about the short stories in the second collection THE UNLIKELY TWINS AND MORE STORIES. These stories have more unexpected twists and turns and surprise endings than those in the first collection. I will try not to give away too many details in case you have not yet read the collection.

One preliminary point. Although I guess it should be obvious, I did not focus on this fact until I began writing. The author has complete control over every aspect of his characters. He can make them good or bad, or he can make them have a happy or sad life. In fact, he can kill them if he wants to. In my opinion, the personality of the character should evolve and should be revealed to the reader as much as possible. but without giving away any surprise developments. That can be difficult in a short, short story.

I tend to lean toward dark characters and especially toward dark story lines, even uncomfortable ones. There are enough "and they lived happily ever after" stories out there. I have told some of my friends that if any of these stories or poems served as the basis for a song, the writer of the music would need to be some rough and unhappy person who has led a hard life. He or she would need to know and feel what it is like. Nothing against happiness, but that does not interest me as a writer. At times, and in some of these short stories, I have forced myself to provide a more positive outcome. Believe me, it is not easy for me.

"The Firecracker Explodes" hatched from a real life experience in our hotel in Cuenca, Ecuador in mid-2023. One of the biggest issues we have had to deal with during our travels is noise. Every kind of noise from every kind of source. I am not a fan of loud noise (except for music), especially when I am trying to sleep. I am not a great sleeper, and I finally learned to use white noise videos on YouTube to drown out the real noise. Most of the time it works. We experienced countless times in which loud noise impacted our lives - discos or karaoke bars in the neighborhood; loud and late parties in our buildings; accommodations on streets with heavy traffic; and especially noisy neighbors, Our experience in Cuenca was a new one for us.

In our Cuenca hotel, the main desk clerk was VERY loud. He was loud in every respect and at any time of day or night, although usually by 11:00 PM all was quiet. His name was Marcos. In fact, Marcos was very loud but he was very nice to us.

Marcos and his noise served as the inspiration for this short story. My irritation with the noise from Marcos increased throughout the three weeks we stayed there. I conceived of, and wrote, most of this story from there. It actually flowed very easily.

I originally titled this story "Killing Marcos". That title evolved into "The Firecracker Explodes". As I began to feel more comfortable as a writer, I tried to write stories which did not contain an absolutely clear ending. I wanted to leave it to the reader to decide how the story ends. I provide the setting and the reader decides. This particular story has one of those endings.